When you don’t know a lot about health, ‘weight’ seems like a really good metric.

And maybe in lots of cases it is (I don’t know a lot about health)

What I find so interesting is that the same weight can feel so different in the body. The scale can show you the exact same number… but sometimes it can feel like a healthy version of you, and sometimes it does not.

I’m pretty sure, with my terrible understanding of how the body works, that it has something to do with the things that are making up that weight. To put it in the most binary way possible: fat or muscle.

It’s not just the number, it’s what makes up the number that plays a huge role in whether we feel healthy or not.

How $30,000 can feel completely different…

If I travel back in time 7 years, I was working at a young artist program and making a pretty decent salary – $1,000 a week for around 30 weeks in the year.

Okay. So it wasn’t a ton of money, but it felt like quite a bit at the time.

$30,000.

Let’s compare that to the last two years. I’ve been going through some transitioning, building up my financial practice, educating the old brain blah blah blah… it’s been a low income couple of years.

In fact two years ago I made around the same: $30,000

Two different years. Two very different feelings. But that isn’t even the half of it.

On the surface I remember very clearly that my first 30,000 felt like a lot. It was my first time making significant money as a singer. It was also paid out in monthly paycheques, which is unheard of in the arts business (at least it is for opera singers). I was taking people out for dinner, and buying all the fancy sweaters.

The second 30,000 felt completely different. Over half of it came from one and a half month’s of gigs. Which meant there were lots of months I was making no money at all. Even though I had a GOOD SYSTEM FOR MANAGING VARIABLE INCOME, going months without the validation of a paycheque made me feel way less positive about my money.

So there you go…. point proven…. income numbers are not created equal, there’s a lot to be said by how those income numbers break down.

And also, I don’t really care about that right now, there’s another level to this whole thing.

Let’s go deeper.

What can $30,000 a year buy you?

So to sum up – 7 years ago Chris felt rich, 2 years ago Chris felt like he was barely scraping by – but you know that I don’t care about how much money is coming in… it’s how we use it that matters. How we use it is a huge factor in how successful we feel about our money.

7 years ago I was pre financial renaissance. I had no idea how I spent my money. I lived by the old code: when you have money spend it, and when you don’t …. live off hotdogs and Mr Noodle.

I finished that year with nothing to show for it. Well… I’m sure nothing is a bit drastic, but since I hadn’t really made clear what my financial/life priorities were, only a small amount of money was getting through to the things that were important.

2 years ago I was in a different stage of my financial technique.

I was able to not only MANAGE THAT VARIABLE INCOME, but funnel it into the things that mattered I’m a little blown away at all the things I was able to do: put thousands of dollars into fixing my teeth, invest another couple thousand in financial planning courses, launch a blog, and buy a new computer and bike.

That’s the difference that a financial technique can make… not necessarily in the amount of income that you make, but the efficacy of every dollar that you have.

Changing everything about how something feels… while not changing anything about how something is

For someone who doesn’t know a lot about money, ‘income’ seems like a really good metric.

And sometimes it is.

But you guys know that income is a hard thing to depend on. And I’m here to tell you that if you’re expecting more income to make you worry less… it won’t.

What’s going to make you worry less is changing the make up of that number. Diving into your expenses and making sure that your money isn’t getting sucked down a black hole or into stuff you don’t care about.

There are a lot of ways to live a $30,000 life.

I’ve lived two options, and there are thousands more.

But the income alone doesn’t determine the possibilities.

You do.

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This morning I’m scared of my work.

It’s over there, in my computer, and I know as soon as I open it I’m going to have to face it. And that scares me.

And so to distract myself from the fact that the only thing which will actually help is actually going to open the damn thing up, make a plan, and all that good stuff… my brain has decided to bring up the ever helpful voice that says things like:

“If this was really what you loved to do, you’d love every minute of it.”

or this one…

“When you love what you do, you’ll never dread Mondays again.”

I dread Mondays sometimes.

There have even been weeks when I dreaded Tuesday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

I’ve dreaded them as a singer, as a writer, and as a financial planner.

The type of work doesn’t seem to matter… so is it me?

What we believe about work: your ‘true calling’ won’t feel like a job at all

Yup. I’ve got this belief kicking around my head.

It’s something that’s instilled in lots of artists. This feeling that you’re so lucky to be able to do what you do. That everyone else would kill for this opportunity. The idea that most people hate their jobs but YOU get to do what you love.

And doing what you love means never feeling like you hate it and want to stay in bed all day.

Doing what you love is what we should all aim to do, because it’s a perfect world of perfect bliss, and if you’re an artist you live in this world and that’s why no one has to pay you in actual money because you’re already paid in the glory of the moment.

*deep breath*

That’s a ton of baggage to put on ourselves.

I’m sure somewhere there’s a magic arts pixie who dances in the fountains of delight every day and needs naught of the sustenance of the physical world.

But when I was singing full time, that was not me.

And now that I’m splitting my focus between opera and planning… it’s still not me.

Hey artists…. other people love their jobs too

I’d just like to add as a note to the creative community… not everyone wishes they were an artist.

I know when we meet them at dinner parties they say: “at least you get to do what you love”… but lots of people do what they love.

In the last 2 years I have met people who LOVE financial planning. And those people say the exact same things that we used to say:

“How lucky are we to be able to do what we love everyday”

And they are. And so are you.

We don’t have a monopoly on ‘living your passion’ in the arts, and that means that we don’t have to live by some other set of rules.

Having a job that you love is not ‘all the compensation you need’

Can you imagine someone going up to a doctor, and after hearing her talk about how much she loves her work with patients and the intricacies of diagnosis and treatment, says something like:

“Man, you love it so much, we should be paying you less.”

No. That’s crazy.

Because we’ve already decided that doctors should make money, whether they love it or not.

We’ve actually decided that most career paths and ‘callings’ should make money, regardless of how much satisfaction they gain from the job.

But not the arts.

Nope.

In the arts, we’re lucky enough to ‘just be doing it.’

Well… bully for us.

The creative community has to change what we believe about ourselves

The hardest thing with a conversation about money in the arts world is that so many of us have adopted beliefs about the work we do and the people we have to be in order to function in this world and be accepted.

Lots of those beliefs hold us back.

And this is a big one.

For years I honestly didn’t realize that lots of other people love their jobs. For years I didn’t recognize the equal standing of a ‘calling’ to be an artist and the ‘calling’ to help someone with their finances.

Both are incredibly challenging and fulfilling lives that people live with passion, creativity and absolutely love.

But the fact that we believe one calling is worth paying for, and one calling is payment in itself is a major problem.

And no one outside of our community is going to change what they believe about us, until we change what we believe about ourselves.

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

It was 11pm … and I was staring down at a plate of cucumber slices and half an avocado.

This was not what I wanted.

But a major fail for late-night-wants-to-eat-junk-food-Chris was a huge win for day-time-Chris-who-planned-on-eating-healthy-this-week.

Because if I’ve learned anything about health – physical or financial – it’s that there are certain times in my life when I have no ability to rationally make the healthy choice… and given the chance… I will spend/eat my way to sickness.

I call those times … the bad decision zone.

My late night bad-decision zone

I got myself to a plate of late night cucumbers by an ingenious trick… I didn’t buy any junk food.

So when I got to that late night bad-decision-zone where I just want to eat something full of salt, fat, or sugar (preferably all three)…. there was nothing there.

And so even though I was always going to make the worst decision possible, I made sure that the potential decisions weren’t actually that bad (the bad part of that healthy plate is the amount of cream cheese I ate with the cucumbers as a ‘spread’… still not bad… but… it was excessive).

It doesn’t always work so well, but I’ve found the act of recognizing my bad habits has allowed me to start figuring out how to work around them (at least… when I want to).

Travel planning and spending thousands of dollars on baked goods

The other bad-decision-zone I’ve been forced to recognize in myself has come up as I prepare to leave on a month long trip later today!!!

I was sitting down on the weekend and working through a budget, and became kind of daunted by the cost of travel.

It was so tempting to adjust some of the categories to make myself feel better…especially what I was planning on spending on things like ‘food’.

But here’s the thing….

I know I’ve got a real bad-decision-zone when it comes to food and traveling.

Whenever I start getting hungry, all bets are off. I want to the tastiest looking thing that’s within eyeshot.

So how do I balance the want to eat great food while I travel… and my want to not come home with $3000 of extra credit card debt?

Mitigating your financial bad-decision-zones

The first step is always awareness. Here’s what I know:

1. I want to eat great food while traveling
2. I cannot make rational financial decisions about that food when hungry

So how do I plan around that?

With my original junk food problem, I limited the decisions I could possibly make, and the same general principle works here.

A daily food budget.

Which is both generous enough to fulfil my travel goals of trying everything that looks tasty… but limits me from making insane choices that I’ll regret later.

I’ll carry it in cash, and only bring the daily amount with me when I’m exploring for the day.

That way there’s a maximum amount of damage my bad decisions can make.

Bad-decisions are hard to manage in the moment

It’s impossible to argue with hungry-travel-Chris.

Once I’m in one of my bad-decision-zones it is way too late to do something about the inevitable bad choice.

That’s why planning and self-awareness are so important when it comes to health.

Don’t pretend like you don’t have bad habits. We all do. Just know what they are, and make some plans to make sure that you don’t sacrifice what you want in the big picture (financial health) for what you want in the moment (all the tasty treats).

Decide how much splurging is okay… and how much would be really damaging to your big goals.

That way you can put all the bad-decision-yous in a cage. They can go as crazy as they want… but they won’t be able to tear the whole house down.

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