My Quest for Creative Financial Freedom pt. 1: Intro / Explanation

Let's Talk About Money.

Many artists avoid talking about money. Conversations about art paychecks happen in hushed tones, behind closed doors.

Why is that?

For one thing, it’s fucking awkward. Success varies wildly, and there’s a lot of anxiety and jealousy amongst young artists. It’s hard not to be jealous, right - if your friend is earning six figures and traveling the world, and you are working at Starbucks, that hurts.

Artists often hold back when talking about how they make money. It’s a reputation thing. If an aspiring full-time artist has to work a day job to the pay rent, they don't want to admit it - after all, it "looks bad!"

People are pushed to pretend they are more successful than they really are. They view perceived success as an important part of getting better gigs.

Other Common Myths

There are a few other insidious myths that deflate artist motivation:

(1) All full-time artists are from rich families / have it easy
(2) The “successful” artists I look up to have it made. They don’t struggle.

Neither of these are true. Some artists come from wealthy families, but the vast majority do not. This is more of an excuse, like “the reason I didn’t succeed is I wasn’t rich like those other assholes”

The other idea - that successful artists have it easy - is fiction. Life is hard. As an artist, you generally freelance or run your own business. That’s a crazy task since most artists are not business minded. It’s always gonna be tough.

Here’s The Plan

I’m going to publicly document my own finances as a full-time creator.

We’re all trying out different ways to live life, be happy, and earn a living. As a single human being with one life to live, you can’t try that many things. For example, if you work at a new job every year for ten years, that’s only ten experiments.

Ideally, we could test out hundreds of different lives before deciding what we want to do. The next best thing is to look at other people as additional data points.

By putting all my info in the open - showing exactly how much I earn, where I get it, and how it evolves over time - I hope it will help other people get ideas.

About Me

I’m currently a 26 year old dude living in Connecticut, USA. I previously lived in New York City, Boston, Raleigh (North Carolina), and a few other spots. I've also toured a decent amount up and down the eastern coast of the USA. Towards the end of 2016 I quit my day job to go full freelance as a musician and writer.

My freelance income started at $150 per week in January 2017 and has increased to $300 per week or so as of June 2017. My next income goal is to reach $500 per week by October. My "stretch" goal is to get there by July.

I am $20,000 in debt, and my short-term life goals are:

1. Get my debt payments under control (I’m behind on one right now)
2. Move away from Connecticut
3. Pay off all of my debts in full.

Longer term, my "personal achievement" (i.e. selfish stuff) bucket list has exactly two things on it:

1. Achieve a net worth of $1,000,000 USD, which means I can live off the interest at $40k per year with total freedom of how I spend my time, and
2. Sell out at least one nation-wide tour for my own music at 100+ cap venues.

What’s Next

In the next post, I'll explain more of my thought process behind my short and long term goals. I'll also break down my exact financial status in terms of what my $20,000 of debt looks like & where my income is coming from.

Down the line, I will offer weekly (or perhaps every other week) updates. Along the way, I'll offer advice and stories from my own experience in the wild jungle of the freelance life.

This blog series will start out as a once-a-week series every Monday at around noon, EST time. Please let me know what you think in the comments! If you tell me what is valuable for you, I'll try to talk more about that stuff.

Thanks for reading :-)

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p.s.: all images in this post, other than my face, are from pixabay.com