Employees, employers, and both: how to balance paying your people (when you’re just getting by yourself)

Employees, employers, and both: how to balance paying your people (when you’re just getting by yourself)

by | Jul 27, 2017 | Building an Arts Business, Getting Started with your Business

This post was commissioned as part of a pilot program at Rags to Reasonable. In an effort to both support artists and gather financial resources and stories, R2R is offering money for content (written, visual, or video).

If you’re interested in pitching an idea fill out .

If you have any questions, email me at ragstoreasonable@gmail.com

paying your people

At heart, I am a leader.

It's a role I fell into accidentally, when I realized that my opinions and my voice were important, and grew into being able to use them for good. I'm not a loud, up-front leader – I prefer to set good examples, be organized, take charge when I need to. Which doesn't preclude being loud, thankfully, but it's at least where I started from.

This has naturally translated into my career – I lead five projects of my own and play in about as many more, depending on the time of year.

One of the things I've discovered, though, about leading a band, is that it's not just your own interests you have to keep in mind.

I've learned so much about being a people person over the past five years leading my bands – and if you check out my previous post, then you'll know I've had a few bigger fish to fry over those years, too.

So the question I'm trying to address today is: how do you balance taking care of the people you care about and work with...with taking care of yourself?

The employee side: getting paid

paying your people

So I'll start with the easy stuff.

Someone hires you to do some work – play a gig, transcribe a tune, show up somewhere and help out with minor lifting. If the first message asking you to do the work doesn't have all the details, don't be afraid to write back and ask for more information, including how much you're getting paid. And if they ask you for your rate, this is a good opportunity to think about how much you actually want to make when you leave the house to work.

If you don't already have a typical rate for your gigs or freelance work, ask your friends what they would charge! The community succeeds when people try not to undercut each other, and if you're going to take a low-pay gig, have a good reason to do it.

Also worth asking at this point is: when do you get paid?

At gigs, usually I get paid on the day of, at the end of the gig, in cash. If the bandleader seems unsure, I'll usually ask when I arrive or before I leave: “Do you have cash for me or should I wait for an e-transfer?”

And for other work that I invoice for, I have a net-30 clause at the bottom of my invoice. “Payment due in 30 days by cash, cheque, or e-transfer. Cheques should be made out to [name] and e-transfers to [email address].” Some people have “due on receipt” clauses on their invoices as well, so whatever you decide, figure out what works best for you.

And last caveat: some people just send the invoice after, without talking about the money first. But sometimes that can lead to some tricky situations, so just be careful.

Know your client!

The employer side: paying your people

paying your people

For this one, I can't stress enough how important it is to look ahead.

Now you have all the easy stuff above – do you get paid day of, before completion, some time after the gig – but you have to figure out: when will you get to pay your people?

There are a few strategies on this one, so again, easy stuff first: is it a performance? Do you get paid in cash?

If the answers to those are yes, then that one solves itself – just split the money on the day of! But say you get paid by cheque. Do you have enough money in your back account to e-transfer your people on the day of? How much do you get charged for e-transfers? Can you take out cash instead? And if you know it's going to be a long time before the cheque arrives (see: some corporate engagements), do you have enough money to get through until then?

This isn't a question with an easy answer, but a rule of thumb from me: giving good karma usually results in its return.

When I'm hiring people, I'm very up front about when they can expect money. And I try and pay everybody as soon as possible, sometimes stealing a trick from my friend's book and paying people ahead of time if I know I have a payday between then and the gig.

What I have noticed among the people I work with is that as long as people know when they're getting paid the first time, they are way more likely to trust you when things inevitably go south.

My last gig horror story involved me getting shorted nearly $1000 – so I took what little buffer I had saved and paid everybody half up front, and then as I saved up the rest, sent them the difference. It meant that I didn't make nearly what I was supposed to on the gig, but I felt much more strongly about the people I worked with being able to take care of themselves.

And as stressful as that is when you are also an artist with no money, I made that decision knowing that I had other income that would help me survive the loss – and in the hopes that if I found myself in that situation, some other bandleader would be able to help. (If you're the kind of bandleader who charges a leader fee – you should be! - then this situation also helps mitigate itself.)

paying your people

In short...

As with most things in life, communication is key. Be clear about your expectations, be fair with your rates (to yourself and to the people you work with), and if things are going to be less than ideal, make sure you have a plan in place to deal with that – whether it's paying people ahead of time, or just making sure they know that that money won't be in their bank account for a few more weeks. A little trust goes a long way – and really, when it comes down to it, we're all just trying to get by.

Chelsea McBride

Chelsea McBride

Paid Contributor

Driven by an endless need for expressing herself creatively, young composer and multi-instrumentalist Chelsea McBride has burst onto the Toronto jazz scene. Whether it’s her big band (Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School), her jazz trio (Chelsea McBride Group), her pop-fusion band (Chelsea and the Cityscape), her Latin-soul nonet (The Achromatics) or her video game cover band (Koopa Troop), Chelsea is a diverse musician who refuses to stay in one creative box. Chelsea can be heard around Toronto playing several shows per month. She has released three albums with Chelsea and the Cityscape and two albums with her Socialist Night School.

You can find out more at www.crymmusic.com

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Money Lessons from my Oma’s Tomatoes… 

Money Lessons from my Oma’s Tomatoes… 

by | Jul 25, 2017 | Getting Started with your Money, Money Meditations, My Financial Journey

I’ve been missing home lately… I always do in the summer/fall.

I grew up on the prairies, and there’s nothing like the prairies when everything is green and growing and producing tasty things.

Here in Toronto I don’t grow things. The few plants in my house are not thriving. I blame the light levels, but I think if they could talk they might mention my inconsistent watering habits.

Whenever I go home, one of the stops I make is my Oma’s garden. Oma is what I call my grandmother. She and my Opa continue to have an incredible garden, even though they’re well into their 80s.

They grow carrots, corn, potatoes, peas, flowers, beans, cucumbers and of course… tomatoes.

And those tomatoes… they surprise me every time.

You see… If you focus just on the plants… they look like the ones in my apartment: very few leaves, barely able to hold themselves up… not the picture of health.

But on every sick-looking branch …. there are bunches of fruit.

Honestly, they look like grape vines, there are so many tomatoes.

And no matter the look of the plants, my grandparents reap huge tomato crops almost every year.

The secret of tomatoes:

How? When I asked, I could see the twinkle in my Oma’s eyes.

"We cut them back. We cut all that extra growth, that way all the nutrients go right into making the fruit, instead of being spilt between the fruit and a bushy looking plant."

Turns out the point of growing a tomato plant is not to have the healthiest looking tomato plan, it’s to grow lots of really good tomatoes.

CUE METAPHOR

Cutting back in order to get more of what you want…

No one really likes cutting back.

Cutting back on tasty dessert, cutting back on Netflix, or cutting back on your spending all seem to be things you know you ‘should’ do… but will definitely suck.

And the spending one can be especially tricky because some of you might look at your spending and say… this all makes sense. I want all these things. They’re important to me.

But there are lots of reasons to cut back.

Sometimes you have to because you can’t afford your life, and sometimes it’s about trying to focus your ‘nutrients’ on growing fruit, instead of growing out the plant.

Sometimes cutting back is the gateway to getting more of what you want…

Your plant VS your fruit

In my mind there are two things that we spend money on:

• maintaining the life we have

• pushing our life forward

Other people might use the word ‘lifestyle’ expenses to describe maintaining your life. But it’s basically the cost of your life - your monthly and annual costs that you’ve pretty much already decided you’re going to spend.

Then we have the big stuff we want to do. It might be paying off our debt, taking an awesome trip, saving for later in your life, or investing in your business.

It pushes our lives forward.

I know that the second one sounds way more sexy, but you can’t spend your money on ‘extra’ stuff until your life costs are taken care of.

In a way, it’s like your plant and your fruit.

Your plant’s health is essential in the growing of your fruit… but… like we see in my Oma’s garden, sometimes too many resources put into your ‘plant’ can reduce the amount of fruit you can grow.

There are a limited amount of resources, and you have to decide where you want to put them.

How to grow bigger, better life tomatoes…

Is there some big life stuff that you really want to get done?

Maybe you need to think about cutting back. Not because you’re not allowed to have nice things, but because you want to use your nutrients differently.

And here’s where we can learn from Oma’s tomatoes again.

There are all kinds of preconceived notions we carry around about what we need to do to ‘create fruit’.

But maybe that’s not the case.

Maybe we can do way more with way less, and the only way you’re going to find out is by doubling down on some experiments.

How much can you cut back before the base health of your life suffers? Which are the right places to cut back, and which places are non-negotiable?

I can’t encourage you enough to start to play with these ideas.. AND don’t decided before you start what the non-negotiables are.

Everything is on the table.

Talk to people who live differently than you do. Talk to people who are older than you and are way ahead in terms of experimentation. Come talk to me, either during OFFICE HOURS or through EMAIL… I’ve got lots of stories of how creative people are figuring it out.

Don’t assume you know the best way to grow a tomato… because maybe you don’t.

I sure didn’t.

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

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

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How to Start Investing in Your Canadian Actors’ Equity Group RRSP

How to Start Investing in Your Canadian Actors’ Equity Group RRSP

by | May 16, 2017 | Investing

The following is a guest post by Dr. John Robertson

Having access to a group RRSP plan can be confusing: so many forms and options and none of it looks optimal. But it’s often automatic and the contributions come off your pay invisibly (like taxes), which makes them a great way to get over behavioural hurdles and get investing for the future.

Chris asked me to look specifically at the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association group RRSP plan. The Association will take at least 6% of your performance earnings and ensure that it gets put away in the group RRSP plan: forced, automatic savings.

Not Optimal

Now for many artists, you may go through a TFSA vs RRSP decision guide and find that the TFSA may work better in your situation. Or find that while the fees are not super-high, you can do better on your own.

So it’s not optimal... so what. There are big benefits to being automatic and invisible (or forced), which may outweigh the other factors. That might mean that you won’t end up voluntarily topping up your contributions, but you’ve still got to register and choose how your contributions will be invested in the group plan.

And remember that a pretty good plan that you actually follow is better than an “optimal” one that exists only in a dusty filing cabinet.

Equity Group RRSP

Choosing Your Funds

In general, try to make your group plan fit your overall investing plan. That can mean looking for low-cost, broadly diversified funds to use, and finding ones with the title of a major index (like “S&P 500”) or that have the word “index” in the title can be good shortcuts to finding what in a big list of funds might work for you.

Target-date funds are not very common in the DIY world, but you can find them in group plans, and they are there for Equity. That can be a good, simple way to go. As can funds with “portfolio” or “balanced” in the name.

There are often lots of options in these plans, and few of them are what you find in the model portfolios you see in The Value of Simple or funds that everyone talks about on Reddit or in MoneySense. Remember that picking something and getting enrolled is far preferable to picking nothing while you try to research to identify the "optimal" fund (or mix of funds).

If you have investments outside your group RRSP, then it's fine to make an incomplete portfolio with your group RRSP because it will be complemented by those other investments. For example, if you're targeting 25% in each of bonds, Canadian equity, US equity, and international equity, and half your investments went into your RRSP[footnote], you could use ETFs to buy the US and international equity on your own and pick a bond and Canadian equity fund (or "balanced" fund using those two) from the group provider, and end up with an overall balanced portfolio.

Equity Group RRSP

Footnote: to be precise, you’d want to discount the value of your RRSP relative to your TFSA for the taxes you’d have to pay on withdrawal (i.e., if you only held US equity in your RRSP, and only held Canadian equity in your TFSA, to make them “equal” the dollar amount on your US equity in the RRSP would be higher than the Canadian in your TFSA). The Practical Index Investing for Canadians course has a module on this, but really there is no precision in investing in the first place, so if you just make the nominal amounts balance out and stick to that plan, you’ll likely do fine.

Specific for Equity (Canadian Actors): the fees for the funds are lower thanks to efforts by the association, so what might show up on Morningstar for these funds in terms of costs isn't necessarily what you'd pay. There are a small enough number of funds to actually look at them without going blind, and there are all-in-one funds as well as sector funds, so you can complement an external portfolio with your group RRSP, or have a complete allocation with ease.

They have 4 asset allocation funds, each with a mix of fixed income, Canadian equities, and US equities, with the fixed income portion ranging from 75% (conservative) to 0% (Aggressive), with 20% for the Advanced and 60% for the Moderate fund. There's also the Balanced Global fund, which is similar (but under a different heading on the sign-up form), with 30% fixed income.

So of those 5 funds, simply find the one that's closest to your risk tolerance, put 100% of your contributions towards it, and call it a day.

Understand Your Risk Tolerance

Of course, that advice may be a bit too cavalier if you don’t have a good handle on your risk tolerance. That’s a central factor in figuring out what you can invest in, and a surprising challenge to really understand: it’s hard to say how you’ll respond to a market crash when you’re not really sure what a market is in the first place.

One of the advantages to a group plan is that you can set your allocation to be a little riskier (more aggressive, i.e. fewer bonds) because you’re less likely to see the declines, and panic selling is a lot harder because of the way the plan is administered. So if you’re not sure of what your risk tolerance overall is, do the best you can, then err a bit on the aggressive side for your group RRSP, then a bit on the conservative side for your other investments (e.g. your TFSA).

Integrating with Other Investments

The Canadian Actors’ Equity Association will help force you to save 6% of your pay in the group RRSP, and other employer-sponsored RRSP programs have deductions in a similar range. While it’s a great start, no financial planner is going to say that that’s actually enough for a secure retirement, let alone other long-term financial goals. So odds are, you’re going to have to save more than that.

You can opt to save more within the same plan, which keeps everything simple, or you can save a bit on fees and have some more control by investing on the side. (As for how to do that, check out a robo-advisor or learn to do-it-yourself with this awesome online course or The Value of Simple)

So if you also invest outside the group RRSP (e.g., in your TFSA), you can view each account as parts of one big portfolio, and just put one (or a few) component(s) in your group RRSP, and hold the others in your TFSA/self-directed RRSP/other accounts. Or you can build complete, parallel portfolios in each account, which may be the way to go if you're using one of the all-in-one asset allocation funds in your group RRSP.

As an aside, you may notice that the funds on offer in the Equity group plan are more heavily weighted in Canadian equities than the typical split of the canonical portfolio many index investing gurus talk about. Remember that there is no precision in investing, and one perfectly good solution is to just shrug that off and build your TFSA as you would otherwise, and let your group RRSP be a touch maple-flavoured. But if you like, you can also hold less Canadian equity in your TFSA (and more US and international equity) to compensate for the excess in your group RRSP fund.

Equity Group RRSP

Conclusion

It can be easy to fall into analysis paralysis with the group plan registration material, and how to make a (mandatory) group plan fit your financial plan. Remember that a good enough automatic investment is better than a headache and an unsubmitted form. For the Equity group plan in particular, a decent default is to take your best guess at your risk tolerance and then put all of your contributions towards the closest asset allocation fund. Costs do matter in investing, but so does simplicity and sticking to a plan. Plus, many group plans negotiate to bring the cost of their funds down to be competitive with simple, automatic options like Tangerine or robo-advisors (the asset allocation funds for Equity in particular cost 0.94%/yr, vs 1.07% for Tangerine).

A Silly But Also Kinda Serious Postscript

Model portfolios are quite popular because it's scary to pick funds to meet even the simplest investment plan. There are tonnes of index funds out there, and even more closet index funds and the like in group plan offerings, and nearly any of them would be good enough for most investors. But it's still really helpful to have a table with a shortlist of funds to pick from, and knowing that together that collection of funds forms a complete portfolio.

Unfortunately, every group plan is different, with lots of funds you may never hear of in books and articles. The guidelines above should help you find a fund (or a few funds) in the selection your plan offers that will work well enough with your investing plan. However, if you're still having trouble choosing or if there are just too many to even read through them to filter the list, here is some silly-sounding advice that may actually work: pick a bunch at random.

When investing on your own there is a real cost to complexity: it takes effort to make the trades, to track the contributions, monitor your performance, etc. But in a group RRSP complexity is nearly free: once you sign up they handle splitting your contributions amongst the funds, and because it's an RRSP you don't have to track anything for taxes other than how much you put in (and eventually take out). So one way to get balance is to just strike off any funds you know are not appropriate for you (e.g., the highest fees if the group sponsor isn't subsidizing, or ones with titles so vague you have no idea what they invest in), and just start assigning percentages to the rest. 10% in almost any random set of 10 funds (or 5% in 20 if your group plan has a really large menu) is going to get you some balance and some diversification, especially if it's 10 balanced/asset allocation funds. This is quite unlikely to be perfect for you, but maybe close enough, especially if your group RRSP is just a portion of your overall investments – you can use your TFSA to make more logical investments, and fix your RRSP later when you know more.

And doing that at first may at least give you an alternative starting point if you're having trouble picking funds: just build something that's better for you than randomly choosing a whole bunch of funds was, and stop when you find it.

E.g., for the Canadian Actor's Association Equity: if you put 12.5% into each of the 8 options (other than the asset allocation ones), you'd end up with a portfolio that was 66% very conservative fixed income, and the rest split between global and Canadian equity. Not ideal perhaps, but you could do worse and at least you picked something, which can be especially important if there’s an employer match just waiting for you to fill out your enrolment form.

John Robertson

John Robertson

PhD, Author of The Value of Simple

John Robertson, PhD, is the author of The Value of Simple and teaches regular people how to become DIY investors through his online course Practical Index Investing for Canadians. He also investigates deep money questions and goes on rants on his blog HolyPotato.net.

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Budgeting Bipolar: How to Manage Your Money When you Have Bigger Fish to Fry

Budgeting Bipolar: How to Manage Your Money When you Have Bigger Fish to Fry

by | May 2, 2017 | Artist 2 Artist, Budgets

This post was commissioned as part of a pilot program at Rags to Reasonable. In an effort to both support artists and gather financial resources and stories, R2R is offering money for content (written, visual, or video).

If you’re interested in pitching an idea fill out .

If you have any questions, email me at ragstoreasonable@gmail.com

Picture yourself at midnight. Your to-do list is just too long for you to successfully complete before bed.  Your bank balance is just thirty dollars under rent, and maybe you have that between your couch cushions, but you also have to buy food.

If you are anything like me, this might be when your alarm goes off to take your medicine. And here is where you learn two things about me: one, that I take a number of medications to keep me sane. And two, that on this particular night, I'm down to my last few. Time to stock up again.

So here's a little background. I'm a full-time freelancer now, setting my own hours and working for hire on all kinds of music related work...and I'm also bipolar with a small sprinkling of anxiety issues. This means that on top of the regular struggles of being a freelancer I'm also balancing doctor's appointments, sessions with a therapist, and the financial cost of medication, which adds up very quickly when you have multiple mental health issues.

So when you're in this situation, what do you do? What happens when managing your money plays second fiddle to staying healthy?

I have a few strategies to manage this:

  • If you're on expensive medications, ask your doctor about insurance options, or less expensive (generic) substitutions. In the province of Ontario, there's a government drug subsidy that limits the amount you pay per year – your deductible – to 4% of your taxable income. And generic drugs, when available, are typically cheaper than their brand-name counterparts, but contain the same active ingredients. But don't make those decisions until you consult a medical professional!

  • When budgeting/planning your spending, have strict priorities – and then have a category or two with no upper limits. When I look at my monthly income, the first gigs and contracts go directly towards my rent, and the next towards transportation. But after that, I have two categories where there is no limit – food, and medical expenses. I would rather go without just about everything else than go without food, and I need my medication to ensure that I'm sane enough to work, and that other people will still want to work with me. (This also helps me manage the manic spending impulses – buying all the snacks at the grocery store is still cheaper than buying too many clothes on a shopping spree!) So if you need to cut back in other areas, do it; make sure your essentials get taken care of first. No one cares if you wear the same clothes every day (well, unless you smell as well). But they will care if you're a good person or not.
  • Preventative measures are smarter investments than damage control later. Staying physically active and eating healthy is essential. So, if that gym membership down the street or your yoga classes or the gear for your beer league is going to be money you'll be happy spending, then invest in it. If you're out a lot and healthier choices are a little more expensive, it's probably still a better investment than that third latte. And if therapy is the answer you need: there are cost-accessible options out there. But putting the time into therapy and doctors and care you need means that you won't end up in the hospital later.

  • Money is no substitute for time. If you need to take the time off to treat your mental health – even if it means taking a little less work – it is an investment in your future, both personally and professionally. Self-care is important!

Money, for me, is always one of the biggest stressors in my life. And we need it to survive. But you only get one body and one mind, and you can't take care of your money if there's no you around to save or spend it!

Chelsea McBride

Chelsea McBride

Paid Contributor

Driven by an endless need for expressing herself creatively, young composer and multi-instrumentalist Chelsea McBride has burst onto the Toronto jazz scene. Whether it’s her big band (Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School), her jazz trio (Chelsea McBride Group), her pop-fusion band (Chelsea and the Cityscape), her Latin-soul nonet (The Achromatics) or her video game cover band (Koopa Troop), Chelsea is a diverse musician who refuses to stay in one creative box. Chelsea can be heard around Toronto playing several shows per month. She has released three albums with Chelsea and the Cityscape and two albums with her Socialist Night School.

You can find out more at www.crymmusic.com

Want to start getting control of your money? How can I help?

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How This Actress Saves 10% of Her Variable Income

How This Actress Saves 10% of Her Variable Income

by | Apr 11, 2017 | Artist 2 Artist, Saving

This post was commissioned as part of a pilot program at Rags to Reasonable. In an effort to both support artists and gather financial resources and stories, R2R is offering money for content (written, visual, or video).

If you're interested in pitching an idea fill out .

If you have any questions, email me at ragstoreasonable@gmail.com

Actress saves 10%

In 2009 I taught English conversation in Algeria earning $3/hour.

I hadn’t made that little since I babysat my cousin in 1992. This was my day job. I led conversation classes while my husband and I created a theater company that offered workshops and solo performances.

We were always paid in cash.

When we got married my husband had no savings. I had $2500. I also still owed $14,000 in student loans. Mohammed had always lived in his family home in Oran, Algeria. I had been living on my own for 4 years in Minneapolis. I hadn’t really figured out a good savings strategy.

I had opened up a ROTH IRA but no one told me I needed to contribute to it monthly. I thought somehow my $1000 would magically turn into $1,000,000 by the time I was 65 on its own.

OPENING A BANK ACCOUNT IN ALGERIA WAS TRICKY.

Apparently it’s not for everyone. You have to have proof of income and they interview you. Luckily, I had a contract from an early education center where I was to offer three weeks of drama in the classroom workshops for preschool teachers. Every time we were paid we had to take the cash to the bank.

Once, my husband was paid about $500 with a cheque. He had to take it to the bank where the cheque was issued. They didn’t have enough cash on hand so he had to wait two hours until someone came in and made a cash deposit.

Our income came in fits and starts. Sometimes we’d travel around the country. Sometimes we’d work nearby. We didn’t pay money for rent—we lived with my mother-in-law, so I would say we paid rent in dish-washing.

Over the course of a month our income might have looked like this:

  • $60 (a week of teaching English conversation)
  • $300 (a performance for a cultural center)
  • $50 (a commercial for the national electric company)

In my mind I had one thing I was constantly focused on: how do I not get stuck here?

How do I have enough money to travel and take a break from the in-laws? How can I save enough so we can move to the US in two years?

I used to listen to podcasts while I cleaned, did all those dishes and took bus after bus after train around Algeria. The one I liked the best was Marketplace Money. At the time, Tess Vigeland hosted it and she often had David Lazarus answering listeners' questions. I heard Tess interviewed by Joel Saul-Sehy a few years after she quit, saying that she had gotten tired of answering the same questions every show. But the weekly repetition of the same answers to the same questions was exactly what I needed. Over and over again I heard them say:

Save at least 10% of every paycheck.

Actress saves 10%

This is what getting paid with a bag of cash looks like

THAT BECAME MY MISSION, MY LASER FOCUS, AND MY RAISON D’ÊTRE. TEN PERCENT.

My husband would bring home a bag of cash (I’m not kidding. Sometimes it was a plastic bag of cash wrapped in newspaper) and I would take 10% off the top and put it in my special leather billfold.

Even if it was $20. $2 came off the top and into the billfold.

It didn’t matter.

10% of everything. It became a ritual.

Get paid, come home, hand me the cash and take 10%. When my billfold was hard to zip I took it to the bank. Sometimes even sooner because I worried about being tempted to touch it.

Once, I deposited $5 in the bank. It wasn’t next door either. I had to take a bus from the suburb we lived in to a stop at the edge of Oran called “Les Amandiers.” Then I could take a taxi or a bus and get off three blocks from the bank. This took about 40 minutes if everything was running smoothly.

40 minutes on public transportation to deposit $5 into our savings account.

In 2009 we collectively earned $6000. In 2010 we earned $8000. In 2012 when we did Mohammed’s visa paperwork and bought two Algeria-Minneapolis plane tickets we had saved $3000.

IN 2012, NOW IN MINNEAPOLIS, THE 10% HABIT SUDDENLY WAS GONE.

Our routine was so different. We paid rent in dollars and not in dish-washing. We had some regular income and some random freelance income. Without the framework and the clear laser focused goal of moving to America pushing me along, I floundered. Until one day I looked at our bank account.

Almost year after living in Minnesota I panicked, “Mohammed we don’t have anything extra. What happened? This makes me so anxious. Where is all our money going?”

And he said, “remember when we used to take 10% of everything. That worked really well."

I no longer had Tess Vigeland and David Lazarus in my ear every week driving the point home. But we started it again. We opened an online savings account with a higher interest rate.

10%. Without a goal it’s harder. So I made some goals and posted them on the fridge.

  • $15,000 emergency savings.
  • $10,000 to have a baby.
  • $30,000 to buy a house.

In 2016 we made close to $50,000 between theater work in Minneapolis and TV work in Algeria.  We’re on our way again.

It’s harder somehow with bigger numbers.

I have to construct the same urgency that I felt when I knew I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with in-laws. I had to reform the habit. But now it’s back.

I brush my teeth, I take out the trash, I meditate 10 minutes, and I save 10%. No matter how small the paycheck. $60 for writing this blog post? $6 into savings.

Except this time without a 40-minute bus ride.

Taous Claire Khazem

Taous Claire Khazem

Paid Contributor

Taous Claire Khazem is an actress, teaching artist and director based in Minneapolis, MN, USA. She also appears on the Algerian sit-com Sultan Achour 10. She is a recipient of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships.

For more information check out HER WEBSITE.

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