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A few weeks ago, I was visiting one of the most financially savvy friends I have up in Vermont and during our conversations, she told me about easily a half dozen side hustles she did growing up long before learning the word side hustle. But my favorite story was this one – she used to house sit while she was in college. Not only did she get away from her dorm room, get to use a real kitchen, play with someone’s pets and sleep in a far comfier bed, she got paid to do it. Be

I’ve been hanging out with a few old friends this week and a common topic that comes up is the good old days. Seriously, one of my oldest best friends and I complained about our knees for 20 minutes last night. That happened. On the flip side, I’ve also befriended a young, new stage manager who reminds me of a hyperactive squirrel sometimes. She’s very excited about everything and I’m pretty darn jaded and suspicious of everything. For a few minutes I thought, dang, it wo

Sometimes spending a little can make your life a lot easier. Apps are one of these instances. Like when I mentioned that a Macbook can be a frugal decision , sometimes a smartphone is too. Honestly, how did we get by before these things? A performer asks some crazy question about the origin of a word - who needs a dramaturge? Google can answer it for you in seconds (kidding, kidding, dramaturges are still useful... for a little longer). And while I'm a big proponent of robo

Confession: I am a book hoarder. If just owning a book could put the information into your head, I would be incredibly brilliant. To be honest, there are quite a few books on my bookshelf that I may never read – because they are boring as all get out. But, ya know, I thought I should read them. There are a bunch of old text books and reference books that I like to think I’ll use again… someday. There’s also a bunch of fiction books I loved and figured I’d reread – only to

Under what circumstances would you work for free? So far, for me, it’s been strictly under volunteer circumstances. For years, I used to help my church with their Vacation Bible School skits and dramas, and that was the one time a year I would do any kind of theater work for free. Despite this the free theater beast has reared it’s ugly head in my life again. I lucked out and landed a pretty decent part-time gig after less than a week of being unemployed after my tour ende

My previous “day in the life” posts were so popular, I figured it was time to add the latest job to the list - a day in the life of a touring stage manager. The thing about this job is that there were three very different kinds of days: There were days off. Seriously, it was incredible. On average there was at least one day off every two weeks, although most of the time it was every week and at the end of the tour it was seriously like 50/50 days working versus days off. Cle

I realize in the entertainment industry, periods of collecting unemployment are the norm. I’ve never thought twice about a friend telling me they were on unemployment. Until the friend became me. Or might become me. I’m still not 100% decided. I’ve always thought of unemployment as a drastic final measure to make sure you’re fed and have a roof over your head. Since I’ve always had my parents place to go back to in between work, I never felt like unemployment was an option

Back in college, I used to hear my professors say “everyone knows everyone” and “the entertainment world is really small” all the time. And I thought they were nuts. Mostly because I knew no one and the world seemed incomprehensibly massive. Well… 10 years later, I can say they were right. And while everyone doesn’t quite know everyone, there’s a very solid six degrees of separation thing that happens in the arts. So for my younger stage management readers out there, here

A few weeks into this tour, I was out to dinner with the other two crew and somehow wages came up. While none of us actually stated what our wages are (although, as tour manager, one of them already knew what all of our wages were), we primarily discussed how low we’re willing to go when accepting work. And what can change that number. Essentially, what's your hard minimum wage? I remember both of them looking at me like I was crazy when I said that my wages right now were a

It’s normal to assume you’ll graduate from college, get your first job and start making money, but some jobs require a little bit of investment for success. I remember shelling out several hundred dollars for medical tests for my first big job that stopped a good friend from taking a similar job – he didn’t have $400 accessible. I’ve worked with other stage managers who were caught high and dry when a performer needed something because they didn’t have a stage managers kit.

Today I’m really excited to share an interview I did with one of the members of my cast, Cat Greenfield – busker, model and puppeteer extraordinaire (cough, cough, hire her , cough, cough). We were hanging out the other day and she mentioned that she busks in NYC and immediately my personal finance wheels started spinning and I wanted to know more about the logistics of being a busker and how much money she actually manages to make. Fortunately, Cat was more than willing to s

Earlier this month I wrote about my mini money challenge idea and how I was going to live on just my per diem. I thought – I’m not going to have any problem doing this. I’m pretty much a golden god of saving anyway, especially after a year of living in NYC. So I nailed it the first week. And then… tech ended and I got a little of my life back. Although not much, honestly. Also, we actually started traveling all the time, which means that after driving 8 hours and loading i

We’re back with another episode of Inside the Artist’s Wallet. For those of you joining us for the first time, Inside the Artist’s Wallet is a YouTube collaboration between me and Stefanie of The Broke and Beautiful Life where we talk with artist’s who are living the dream and not starving to death. If you missed it, you can check out our first series featuring Patrick Judd here . Today we’re starting a new series featuring Kitty Ostapowicz, an aspiring television and movie

A few months ago while working on my death prep series (yeah, it’s as morbid as it sounds), I mentioned that one of the items you need is a power of attorney. Power of attorney is a document that allows someone else to make decisions and essentially act as you. There are actually two kinds of power of attorney and in that first post, we focused on the durable kind. A durable power of attorney will continue to be valid even if you become physically and mentally incapacitated

So today is my first day at a new job! It’s pretty common knowledge among my regular readers that I was discontent at the last one. I actually had a funny conversation one of the last days at my old job with the Stage Manager for the company doing the show there. She said she heard I was leaving and asked where I was going next. When I told her I was going back to stage management because production management wasn’t really for me, she started to laugh at me and told me she’d

I’ve spent months expressing my unhappiness with my current job and the time has come to do something about it. I pretty much blitzkrieged the entertainment world with resumes over the last week and I learned a pretty exciting fact - I’ve finally seem to have enough experience that people actually read them. My boss managed to push me a little over the edge with a lengthy, condescending email on my day off last week over .15 cents and in response I added cruise lines to my

A few months ago I wrote a post about how to stock a stage management kit on a budget . One of those tips was to use freebie offers to stock your kit, but since then a few of you have reached out to find out more about exactly where and what you can find for free for your kit. So I’ve gone down my kit inventory and noted some items I’ve picked up as freebies. Some are offered all the time and others you have to keep an eye out for. For this to be a successful technique for 

So – I can’t exactly write a post on how to save on the best pair of black pants since this is a pretty endless debate in the theater world. Especially among the ladies of the theater world. See this extensive thread at the SMNetwork or this post at Headset Chatter . Personally, I’ve been on the lookout for lightweight, strong , soft cargo pants that don’t make me look like a dude for… oh… ten years. I found a pair that almost made the cut once at Old Navy (never to be s

A few months ago I tossed out the idea “ how much do stage managers make ?” Because as one, I’m generally pretty curious. There’s a wide variety of pay scales among us (and the job itself varies widely), but I’ve always been a little puzzled about why we keep what we make such a secret. If you want to major in banking, a couple of Google searches will give you a pretty good idea of your likely earning potential, assuming your not a total basket case at your job. The same is

Stage Managers are people with the answers to all the questions. How do we get that way? With a heck of a small army of tools and tricks. If you’ve already checked out how to stock your kit on a budget , here’s a list of several apps to beef up your smartphone for free* too. ~~*~~ 1.)   Dropbox and Evernote – both of these apps are great for sharing and retrieving information on the go. How many times have you wished you had next week’s schedule sitting in front of you whe