Have you ever wondered how you can make it as an artist, and still provide financially for you and your family?
What if your career in the arts takes too much time to start getting noticed and generating money?
These are real world questions that all of us need to answer if we want to pursue a creative career, especially if it’s in a field that is struggling to make a profit, like today’s market.
These questions and more went into my decision to spend ten years preparing for my career in art. Let me share with you how I’m trying to mitigate some of those challenging risks as I go forward as an independent writer and movie producer.
- Don’t Rely On A Single Income Stream
Maybe money doesn’t matter to you. Perhaps you feel that the pursuit of cash is capitalist propaganda and is inversely correlated to the pursuit of happiness. I’m not like that.
At the same time, I’m not what I’d consider materialistic either. I’m fine driving a drab car, I’m okay with mediocre living conditions. I’ve been there. But I’ve also learned that money makes the world a much easier place to navigate when you have it, especially if you’re raising a family.
I was also painfully aware that if I pursued my dream of being a writer/producer, there would be a few years, where I likely wouldn’t make any money at all, perhaps I’d even lose money. Considering that movie making is an expensive way to express yourself, I didn’t want to start this career financially unprepared.
For that reason, my 10 year plan to get ready for this new endeavor, included finding ways so that I didn’t have to rely on my art to be financially independent. First off, I had to learn what could generate money for me when I made the switch, and which would still allow me to work on my writing and filming. At the time, I knew how to work hard, and that was about it. I didn’t know how to invest. So began my journey to becoming financially stable.
Over the course of those ten years, I learned as much as I could about the stock market, real estate, and business. Since I was in the home development and construction field, understanding how to invest in real estate became my first learn.
I learned that buying properties, improving them, and selling them quickly was one of the best ways to grow your money fast. I made a career out of buying vacant land, developing it into subdivisions, building homes on them, and selling them. It took a lot of work, and I had to reinvest every dollar I had into the next project, and I still had to take out massive loans to do these sorts of projects. All the while, I had to deal with market fluctuations. This is not a career that is risk free, especially since I know plenty of developers who went belly up over the same time period that I was doing this. But it forced me to save money, learn business and marketing skills, and get me on a good path.
The next real estate lesson I learned, was that buying and holding cash flowing real estate was a good long-term investment. Unlike buying, improving, then flipping properties, this one requires a much longer time frame, which can be hard if you don’t want to tie up your cash that long. Like the other, loans can be a helpful tool, as long as you’re smart with them, and don’t let them ruin you. The profitability here is smaller than flipping, but its a little more steady.
For me, I started by turning over my money as often as possible, but now that I’ve got a little saved up, I’m switching to building long term cash flowing rentals units. These should provide me with a steady stream of income to help keep me solvent, even if my studio doesn’t make any money for the first few years, or ever.
Another avenue of income is the stock market. It took me a while to figure this one out. I didn’t want to be a day trader, though that is always tempting, because I don’t want to spend every day, stuck in front of my charts when I could be writing or film-making.
So I learned how to trade options on a monthly basis, creating cash flow in a safer, steadier way. This is not without risk, but on average, I can make a profit over time, and I only have to check the markets for 15 minutes or so each morning, freeing me up to do what I really need to work on.
I’ve also come across other investment opportunities over the years that have intrigued me. I did some angel investing for a vitamin company, which turned out to be a great investment, and currently pays me over $4000 each month. I Also learned about investing in oil rigs, and other financial tools that can generate cash flow.
- Take The Time To Learn About Investing
There is no doubt that investing is a complicated world. There are many risks, which some people find too scary to get involved in. I have lost a lot of money in some of my investments. Some of that is the luck of the draw, and some of that turned into important learning opportunities.
What I could not have done, was any of this without taking the time to learn about it, and pinching every penny to put into it.
In the mornings, I worked on improving my art. Then I went to my day job for 10 hours each day. When I got home in the evenings, I spent a lot of time researching and learning. That’s even after I had my degree in finance. What I did not do, was go home and play video games and watch TV all night.
Nor did I spend hardly any money on frivolous things. For Christmas, especially early on, my wife and I gave ourselves a $25 budget for each other. You can’t imagine how creative we got, and those were fun memories. Even our Christmas tree was cut from the branches of a tree that had already blown over in a massive wind storm.
In the end, I wanted my ten years of prep to learn all I could about investing, but also have the money to put that knowledge into practice. Now, ten years later, I’m making the transition, and I’m incredibly grateful for my dedication to learning all this, and to my wife’s dedication to living a thrifty life. I’m in a great position to make a go at this artistic lifestyle that I’ve been preparing for, all these years.
If you want to learn more about how you too can safeguard your future, follow me here, or on my LightMinded Arts YouTube channel, where I’ll be sharing a lot of these life lessons and financial essentials. I’m putting this together for my wife and kids to learn, and I’m inviting you to join me for free.
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