Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Money Mindset for Artists, Freelancers & Gig Workers with David Maurice Sharp
Transcript
- Marci Grossman (00:16) Hello, I am MoneyMarci, welcome. I'm thrilled to welcome today's guest, David Maurice Sharp. David is a financial literacy educator and the author of "The Thriving Artist: Saving and Investing for Performers, Artists, and the Stage and Film Industries", and a contributing author to "A Life in Dance: A Practical Guide". He is also the author of "A Bell for Maury's Bicycle", which is an age-appropriate and fun introduction to some basic financial concepts for young readers and soon-to-be readers. In October 2014, he was named a Money Hero for his work in financial literacy for artists by Money Magazine. He currently teaches at HB Studio and the Actors Fund in New York City and frequently presents workshops for Music Cares Foundation, the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, and other organizations around the country. David has danced with many dance companies including the Mimi Garrard Dance Theater from 1993 to 2001, has been performed at such venues as the Lincoln Center, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, NYC Fringe Festival, La Mama, Soho Rep, Studio Theatre, and HERE, And his video work, Shadow Dance, received a silver award from the Dance on Camera Festival. Welcome, David. I feel like I just did bios for two different people. David Maurice Sharp (01:55) Thank you. Yeah, it kind of feels like that to me sometimes too. Marci Grossman (01:59) What came first, financial or artistic? David Maurice Sharp (02:04) I was definitely artistic. So I went to NYU and majored in drama, but then migrated into the modern dance world. And as you're probably aware of, modern dancers are not some of the most highly compensated people in the world. So I was always looking for ways, extra ways to make money to sort of help to make ends meet between gigs. I was finishing up doing a production of Cabaret outside of New York City and was starting to think about what I was going to do next. And a friend suggested that I try doing temp work because I would have flexibility in schedule and it would give me time to do the performing work that I wanted to do and take classes, et cetera. So I signed up with this agency and they sent me on an interview for a company down on Wall Street. And it was this company didn't just let them put temps there. They made them come in and interview first. So I went down to Wall Street knowing nothing about what was going on there. The very first question they asked me was, do you know anything about Wall Street? And I said, not a thing but I can learn. And then they started asking me about Cabaret and about my dance career. And I was like, so I walked out of this interview thinking, okay, that's gone nowhere, but it was interesting. I got to see what a Wall Street firm looks like. And by the time I got home, this predated cell phones, by the time I got home, there was a message from the agency on my answering machine saying that they wanted me to start as soon as I could. So I started working there and I started learning about the financial world because this was a company that worked on corporate takeovers and tender offers and annual meetings and all these things that I didn't know anything about, but I learned. And I became very specialized in one of the voting aspects of corporate elections and they didn't have anybody else doing that. At the end of the day, they agreed to hire me part-time with complete flexibility so that I could keep dancing and going to auditions. I even went on tour while I was working for them. They let me do that. The side benefit of that was I learned about the investing world. And this was also at the time when mutual funds were just becoming available. So everyday people could have a way into investing and using investments to sort of help them. Because prior to that, you had to be kind of wealthy and have the right inside information to be able to invest. So mutual funds really changed the landscape on that. And I started realizing how investing could actually help artists sort of bridge that feast or famine, ebb and flow of income by using, what investments provided, but they needed to find a way into it, right? Because the information that's out there is great, but it's mostly geared towards what I usually refer to as the regular people, the ones who have nine to five jobs and, 401ks and everything, and artists don't have that. So their job was kind of complicated because they first had to understand the language of investing. And then they had to figure out how to apply it to their own circumstances. And that led me into starting to work with artists and starting to teach and eventually to writing the book, The Thriving Artist, as a sort of roadmap for them to use to understand the markets and understand how the markets could be used to help them support their artistic career. Marci Grossman (05:24) Well, I like the way that you grouped artists and other freelancers because, financially, they are so similar because it's a feast or famine, whether you do consulting or you do dancing, whatever it is, gig work, David Maurice Sharp (05:40) And we're becoming more and more a gig society. And I like the freedom that that gives you, but you have to take responsibility from things that a corporation, if you were working a regular job, would take responsibility for, like bridging those gaps of low income periods. Marci Grossman (05:59) Right, being responsible for your own health care and your withholding and all of these other... Exactly. Exactly. So did you go back to school and get, I don't know, certifications or degrees or anything in financial or is this all experiential and you built from there? David Maurice Sharp (06:03) Exactly. Retirement, know, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's primarily experiential. I did take the coursework for the CFP program, Marci Grossman (06:30) For those who don't know, CFP is a designation for Certified Financial Planners. David Maurice Sharp (06:36) but I purposely didn't take the test because when I talked to artists, I wanted to be able to be free to talk to them about what their experience was and how they could use this system. And I was concerned that if I had these, you know, took the test and actually got the certification that I would be limited in what I was allowed to say to them to an extent. So I did all the coursework and then just chose not to do the certification. But I will tell you, in doing the coursework, I also found, I mean, it's a great program. And I think people with a CFP designation, that's a great designation to have. But again, it was all geared towards not freelancers, not artists, but geared towards people who had a very steady income and were working for corporations. And so even in that work, never really found any kind of resource or program that really bridges that gap between freelancers and artists and the investing world. Marci Grossman (07:34) I love that you talk about mutual funds because I think mutual funds are such a great way for people to start dipping their foot in investing. It works for smaller amounts, it gives you some of that, diversification that you can't necessarily get when you're investing smaller amounts of money. David Maurice Sharp (07:49) of expectation. Right. And it's also, one of the biggest crutches, I think, that a lot of artists and freelancers use that prevents them from starting to invest, is to say, I want to wait until I have a lot of money, because you can't do anything until you have a lot of money. And so I always tell them, you know, look, I understand that you like that crutch, but I'm going to kick it out from underneath you. And sorry, not sorry, because there are now mutual funds that allow you to do a dollar at a time if you want to, as little as that, right? And me, I'm a skeptic and I like to have practical experience when I'm talking to people. So I opened accounts at some of these mutual funds that said, yeah, you can invest a dollar at a time. And I tried to do it and they actually let you do it. And so I always tell them, look, you're not gonna get independently wealthy by investing a dollar a month, right? But it's gonna give you the experience and it's gonna get you over that hurdle of fear of what is happening in those investments without putting a lot of money at risk. And so yes, I mean, everybody can find $5 a month to invest. So even if you're a starving artist, that really changed the whole playing field for investing and really opened it up to everyone. Marci Grossman (09:17) Right. As I said I love mutual funds as a great way to to get started. ⁓ David Maurice Sharp (09:26) Yeah. And even ETFs now, mean, ETFs are, you know, when they first came on the scene and it wasn't really that long ago that they came on the scene, there was a lot of uncertainty as to what they were and they were sort of finding their footing. But now I think it's, they've been out there long enough that they're another viable form of a mutual fund, right? Because there's still a diversified portfolio that you can invest in. And a lot of the brokers are now allowing you, instead of having to buy like a share at a time, which could be pricey if it's an expensive ETF share, they're allowing you to do dollar amounts for very small amounts into ETFs as well. So that's opened up another sort of category of ways of being diversified without having to expend a lot of money. Marci Grossman (10:11) So for my listeners who may not know, will you explain to them what ETFs are and how they are different and the same as mutual funds? David Maurice Sharp (10:19) Sure. So ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. And basically, I always describe mutual funds as being like a basket that a financial manager puts a bunch of different things in. When you buy a share of the mutual fund, it gives you exposure to everything that they've put in that basket. So it's a basket filled with a bunch of different stocks of different companies, when you buy a share of that mutual fund, you get incremental exposure to every company whose stock is contained in that basket. Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs are the same concept. It's a, it's a basket that they put a bunch of different things in. The difference is that when they create the exchange traded fund, they release the shares onto the trading markets. So the shares start trading in the same way as a, share of stock would trade. So that means the price of an ETF is going to fluctuate throughout the day, depending on, the supply and demand, right? Whereas with mutual funds, at the end of every day, they add up the value of everything in the mutual fund, divide it by the number of shares, and come up with what they call the net asset value, or NAV. And that represents the price of the mutual fund, and it's directly related to everything that's in the mutual fund, because that's how they calculate it, right? They add up the value, divide by the shares, that's the NAV. Whereas with ETFs, there's a little bit of a disconnect between the value and what it's trading for. Well, there could be, because it's trading on the market kind of separate from the actual valuation of what it contains. Marci Grossman (11:55) I appreciate that and my listeners do as well. I know I get comments periodically, okay, you said a word, I didn't know what it means. So I'm trying to make sure I back up and get the explanation from the professionals. You talked a little bit about teaching artists about mutual funds and about investing. What else do you see as different for David Maurice Sharp (12:08) Absolutely. Marci Grossman (12:20) I guess I can call them all gig workers for their learning about their financial well-being and adapting financial principles to their less conventional lifestyle. David Maurice Sharp (12:32) So a couple of things I would say, one of the first things I talk to them about is how to get away from that feast or famine mentality. Meaning that in those periods of time when you're making a lot of money, you spend it like there's no tomorrow. And then suddenly in the periods of time when you aren't making any money, you say, shoot, why didn't I save money when I was working and making a lot of money? You hear stories about that all the time. And it's very easy to get sucked into that mentality. So the way I found to get around that is it starts with calculating what I call your monthly nut, which is how much it costs to get you through any given month - your expenses, your investments, everything altogether. That's your monthly nut. Then once you start earning money, you put all of your money, anything you earn into, I usually put it into a savings account because at least you're going to earn a little bit of interest on it. So you throw all the money, anytime you get paid for anything, you put it into your savings account. Once a month, you pay yourself a paycheck. And the amount of that paycheck that you're paying yourself is your monthly nut. So what that does is it kind of tricks you into being an employee of yourself. And so you sort of trick yourself into being in the same sort of money pattern as the people who get regular paychecks and they're like, okay, well, this is my paycheck for the month and that's all I can spend because you're only spending it. So it means that the months that you're making more money than you need for your monthly nut, it's accumulating in your savings account to be used in the months where maybe you're not making as much, you don't have as much income to cover your monthly nut. Once people sort of adapt that mentality, that really helps them break from the feast or famine mentality and really start accumulating funds to invest into other things. The other thing then, once they get to that stage, I tell them is start to save because that's the best habit that you can get into. And even if it's just saving $5 a month, if you get in the habit of paying yourself that savings, it's going to start to build wealth for you and give you funds that you can invest. Once you start investing, a lot of times freelancers, it's beneficial for them to look for income producing assets like equity, dividend paying stocks, bonds that pay interest, things like that, because that income that they generate can start to help supplement periods of time when they're not making as much money. And the advice generally for the regular people is don't do that because you're making a regular salary. So you don't really need to have your investments generating actual income for you, they can just be worried about getting growth, the share price getting greater in value. And I tell them, look, it's not dissimilar for actors, it's not dissimilar for the times when you do like commercials or film work and you start to get residuals. You know, if you start putting all those little residual checks together, they start to add up over time. And if you think of your income producing assets in the same way, they can become a way to bridge some of those low income gaps. Marci Grossman (15:42) So what kind of work are you doing as a financial professional at this point? David Maurice Sharp (15:47) I do a lot of teaching. I teach with the Actors Fund you mentioned. It's now called Entertainment Community Fund. So I teach regularly for them. I'm also on faculty at HB Studio. I do some private consultations as well, but more from the point of educating people about how to start taking control of their finances and adapting them. And I'm continuing to write children's books. The second Maury book, so the first one, as you mentioned, is A Bell For Maury's Bicycle. And that the genesis of that was when I was teaching, I was finding, especially a lot of older people would say, if we had only known all of this information when we were a kid. And I was like, yeah, they really need to start teaching children to not be afraid of finances and investing when they're young, because imagine how much more armed for success you would be if you had that. So I finally, found an illustrator and finally did A Bell For Maury's Bicycle which introduces some basic saving and investing ideas in a storytelling mode. So it's not like beating the kids over the head. The second one came out called Maury Becomes a Super Saver. And that's about him and his parents helping him to open a savings account so that he starts learning about that. And then the newest book is coming out in June of this year in the series and it's called Giving Makes Maury Happy Too, and it introduces the idea of charitable giving and that idea and how that can benefit your financial wellness as well and how that's an important component of financial wellness. So I think there's still a few more in the series for little Maury to think about. And then I have, there's a couple of colleges in New York that use The Thriving Artists as required reading for their classes. And I go in and usually talk to the students when they've read the book to see if they have any questions about that. It's important to me that there's a way of reaching artists and freelancers to make them feel empowered to be able to do this. One of the reasons I called the book The Thriving Artist was because I really wanted to go against this idea of the starving artist, right? Because we get sucked into that mentality of we have to be poor and starving and struggling and I was like, that's not what we need to be thinking. We need to be, you're gonna be just as challenged as an artist if you have resources than if you don't, right? The angst is gonna still be there regardless. So we might as well get rid of the financial angst to the extent that we can. Marci Grossman (18:17) What do you find is the most important first step for artists and freelancers to take about the financial? David Maurice Sharp (18:26) To actually realize that they can do it, because I think that there also sometimes is this mentality of it's over our heads, we're not going to be able to figure this out. So I think that is an important first step. Saving, starting to save, like I said, setting aside even a few dollars a month. I always tell them, say, look, don't leave one of the classes that I teach all gung-ho and say, I'm going to start saving $3,000 a month because it's going to be great. And then you, because after, you know trying to do that and failing, you're going to say, this sucks, David's an idiot, I don't want to do this anymore, right? So start small so that it's manageable and that you're not missing it. And then you can sort of gradually dip your toes into the water. Some artists are ready to dive in feet first. Some need to ease in. I always say, look, I was one of those people when I got into a swimming pool, it took me a half an hour to get into the pool because I have to like ease myself in slowly. And then there's other people who jump in the deep end. There's nothing wrong with that. Figure out what works for you. But you also have to know that doing is learning. If you were an actor, you wouldn't say, I'm not going to take a role until I know everything there is to know about acting. Because you can't ever know everything there is to know about acting, right? But by taking the role, you're actually learning as you go along and you're improving your skills by doing the role. The same is true of investing. You need to get your feet in the water because you're going to learn a lot by doing that. And as we discussed earlier, there's ways of doing that for very small amounts of money so that you can really reduce the risk that you feel. Putting $1,000 into an investment is scary for a lot of artists and freelancers. That's a lot of money. But putting a dollar in is suddenly not so scary, right? And that's a good way of easing yourself in if you're one of those people who's been terrified of doing it. Marci Grossman (20:24) Do you deal with the people who have nine to fives or are all your clientele and all your speaking really to gig workers and artists? David Maurice Sharp (20:34) It's mostly to that, although I have, I have certainly talked to people that are in the nine to five world. It's what was one of the things that was interesting to me. I went into, you know, a Wall Street company. They said, could you just do a talk for us about retirement vehicles? Cause they just instituted a 401k and they also, you know, I also talk about IRAs and, know, the different components that could make up, your post-working life. And when I talk to artists, I always make the assumption that they've never heard some of the terminology that I'm talking about, similar to what you were saying earlier. With this Wall Street group, most of them had MBAs. I figured, OK, I can tone back the simplification of things because they're going to know what they are. And when I was talking about cash investments and savings accounts and things like that, it occurred to me to just say, OK, and CDs are another way to invest in cash. Does everybody know what a CD is? And I was shocked at how many people had no idea what I was talking about. Financial literacy really is lacking everywhere in society, especially on a personal level. And these were people who were dealing with restructuring transactions for major companies that had no idea about their own personal finances, but they could talk about the restructuring of a company and what they were doing. So that was really interesting to me. Kind of a long-winded answer to your question. I do talk to that crowd as well, although my biggest focus is on the artists and freelancers. And I do have to be careful when I'm talking to the other crowd that I avoid referring to them as regular people or ordinary people. Marci Grossman (22:23) I said, well, just call them the audience. David Maurice Sharp (22:25) The audience, exactly, exactly. Because it's not meant as a derogatory thing. It's just, they're different worlds, they're totally different worlds and different experiences and different needs, right? Marci Grossman (22:41) Different people always have different levels of how much they're willing to talk about money and I guess I shouldn't call anybody out whether it's artists or other gig workers or nine to five people about who is more willing to be drawn into the discussion, the conversation of talking about money, but what are some tools you use to encourage people to be more open to that conversation? David Maurice Sharp (23:10) Because I do find, and I'm sure you've seen this as well, people tend to be very embarrassed about their finances, right? Because they are embarrassed by their lack of knowledge. They get embarrassed by feeling that they haven't done enough. The other thing that I find a lot when I go into classes for the first time is people think I'm trying to sell them something, which I don't. I'm not selling insurance policies. I'm not recommending anything to them. I'm just trying to educate them on what the possibilities are. So I kind of always approach it from that angle of, we're here to educate. And then I try to incorporate humor in it when I can, because that usually gets people to relax a little bit, because when they suddenly can associate the financial world with humor and fun, that helps them be more open to listening to what it is. And there's always that light bulb moment in the audience where they suddenly, their walls go down and they go, oh wait, I can do this. And I see how this can really help me. I'm not being judged by whether I have $5 in the bank or I have $500,000 in the bank. It's really about, because I also explain to them, I say, when I do a class, I cover a lot of territory which can be overwhelming. But you have to think of it as being like a mural that you're building. And you have to see the whole big picture before you decide which particular tile you want to put in at any given moment. And everybody, because of our different experiences, is going to have a different tile that makes the most sense for their life at that moment. But you have to sort of know what the big picture is to be able to then hone in on, OK, this is the the particular thing that I need for me. And so I think when you approach it from where they're thinking about what they need to do rather than feel like they're being told what everybody should do and, trying to squeeze them into a formula that exists maybe for some people, but is it right for them? I think that also helps to open them up and appeals to the creativity that they have so that they can apply that to what they're doing as well. Marci Grossman (25:22) I find it's always interesting to talk to someone and find out because we don't know what someone else knows. We don't know what their background is, what they were raised with, what feelings about money are ingrained in them. And even when you start talking to someone, you don't necessarily know that. If you go to LinkedIn and you scan through, most people are making money with so many zeros on it. And we know that's not true if we deal with real people on any kind of regular basis, but you only see what you see. Like in, if you go to Facebook and everybody has the happiest family and everyone always gets along and all of that, because we always put our best face forward. It's hard to break down that wall and be willing to say, I don't know this or. David Maurice Sharp (26:11) right? Marci Grossman (26:16) I am not sitting on a huge trust fund or any of those things that it feels like the rest of the world has. David Maurice Sharp (26:25) Right, right. Or the culture that I come from forbade investing in anything other than putting money in a bank account or keeping it under your mattress, because I come across that a lot. There's different cultures that are just very much against any kind of investing in stocks or bonds. And so you have to sort of, they have to recognize that first, that that's the bias that they're coming into it with and then find a way for them to be able to look at it and see how it could benefit them. And a lot of times what's interesting is then they can take that information back to their families and say, look what I've learned that's overcoming this bias against this and ways of doing this. So yeah, I agree. A lot of it is just sitting back and hearing where the individual is and where they're coming from and what scares them. And I also, I'll say, some people that I've worked with that have started off with, I'm terrified of doing this. I don't know if I can do it. I wanna do very small amounts of money. After a period of time, which is usually pretty short, they're suddenly like, this is great. I wanna do more of this. And I wanna do this and I can do this. And I had one person who had come to me who had basically nothing and felt very shamed that they had never done anything. They were performing artists. And after about six months, I was suddenly getting emails saying, my gosh, I just spent the last hour researching stocks to buy and I can't wait to do it. So I started calling them The Mogul because I was like, look at what a change in attitude that you've had. not that they're being risky, they're still being very methodical and very careful about how they're building their financial wellness portfolio. But we found that path for them to get into it and then for them to blossom and really take control of it and enjoy it. Marci Grossman (28:20) That's gotta feel good. David Maurice Sharp (28:22) It does, it does. And you see how much it's benefiting them and how much relief it gives, which is great. I think, our society sort of imposes this idea of shame on not knowing, even though we're not being taught it, there's a shame of not knowing it and not talking about it. And, it's like taboo to talk about money. Well, it's not. I also tell them, talk to your friends, talk to the other people in in the profession. I had one woman who, took one of my classes, who was like a camera operator on the Bloomberg station. And she came back to classes after a while and said, somehow we started talking about it. And we have this whole group of people that are on the set of Bloomberg, the cameraman, the stage managers, all of us, that we share stock tips and we share investment tips. And we have this whole conversation going. And I'm like, that's important because hearing from your peers, and feeling that safety from your peers is going to help keep you motivated and keep you doing what you need to do to move the ball forward. Marci Grossman (29:24) That is true. Do you still do any dancing, performing, choreographing? Is your foot still in that water? David Maurice Sharp (29:32) I still, yeah, I keep a little foot. I don't dance. I stopped performing many years ago, but I do get called into choreograph for some plays and musical work in the city sometimes. I also am a guest teacher at a couple universities in the New York area for some movement classes for graduate film director students, so that they can find, they can have a language, a movement language to talk to their actors about if they're having trouble getting them to do something. I definitely have shifted much more into the financial world, but I still do try to keep connections to the performing arts world because I think it's important to still understand that world and what they're going through now. Marci Grossman (30:18) I do threaten people if they don't seem to understand my words that I might do it in interpretive dance, but I am not a dancer and someone would probably get hurt. David Maurice Sharp (30:31) I don't know, I may hold you to that and get you to demonstrate your interpretive dance for me one of these days. Marci Grossman (30:37) There is that, competition. Dance your PhD, you never heard about that? yeah, they would have these people who would - not dancers - dance their PhD in whatever thing. I'll send you a link about that afterwards. I'll see what I can find. Yes, but remember, non-dancers. David Maurice Sharp (30:42) No, no, no, no Yes please how fun. But you know, it's interesting because dance for non dancers, I once had a director tell me that this one of the similarities they saw between financial literacy education and dance education, particularly for non dancers, was that both things were something that were incredibly fearful for people to do. Because people that aren't trained as dancers are often very fearful of moving and being seen moving and doing that. Just like people with their financial information are very fearful of exposing what they don't know about it or what they don't have. And I was like, that's really interesting. I never really saw the connection in that way between them that I was working with people on things that scared them. But I do see that in the film directing students that I work with because they're directors. They're not movers and they're not performers. And there is this resistance at first in the same way to movement because they're like, I don't want somebody to see me moving. And so that was an interesting sort of connection between those two that I hadn't thought of. Marci Grossman (32:03) Well, I guess people are all afraid of things that they don't know and don't do. When my dancing, I'm more afraid someone else will get hurt, but you know. We all have things we fear and we all have things in life, especially money, that we're gonna have to deal with whether we're afraid of it or not. David Maurice Sharp (32:07) Yeah. Yeah Right, right. It would be nice to think that like money's gonna fall from the sky or grow on a tree in our backyard, but unfortunately that's not gonna happen. or may happen for one in a million, but it's just not gonna happen. I also tell people, look, as artists, yeah, you may get that big gig, that big, commercial break, that big feature film that's gonna pay you a ton of money. If you have put all these small steps in place and created the framework for your financial well-being plan, then when you do get that feast, you're going to know what to do with it. You're going to be prepared for it. And you're going to have more awareness of how that can benefit you in the long run. Marci Grossman (33:06) Right, you never know when you have that one big thing if you've got another big thing coming or if it'll be a while. David Maurice Sharp (33:13) Exactly, exactly, or ever. You know, was that the one thing? And there's this whole middle ground in the arts too of like slow and steady, you know, working steadily and making, an okay income. And that's a great thing too. But always taking control of the finances is always going to support whatever is happening in your life, artistically. When I back in my dance days, I was brought in to audition to be the tap dancing bumblebee for Macy's Flower Show. So the audition consisted of me going into this room with these Macy's executives who were all in their ties and suits. And they made me put on this bumblebee costume with a hat that had little antennae and I had my tap shoes on. And they were like, OK, David, tell us some Bee jokes and do a little bee dance and sing us a little bee song. I was like, luckily I didn't get it. And luckily it's before YouTube. So there's no footage of me doing that. But I just thought, and I'm not in any way denigrating that kind of work, because I know people who love to do that kind of character work, but I was a modern dancer. That wasn't what I wanted to do. Although the money would have been really nice because it paid really well. Marci Grossman (34:19) Ha ha! David Maurice Sharp (34:34) But by taking control of my finances, it gave me the choice of choosing to do things that were artistically really rewarding for me, that maybe weren't paying as much as some other things. And that to me was such a great gift of taking control of my finances. I did signature works of some really incredible choreographers that I didn't have to worry about how much money they were paying me. It was always nice to get paid well, but like a lot of times in that world they don't have that. So having control gave me so much more choice in what I did as an artist and that was fulfilling to me as an artist. So I think that's an important element and an important thing that I try to emphasize with artists is you want to have choices. You don't want to feel like the arts are guiding you. You want to feel like you're following your path as an artist in the way you want to. And I would say the same is true for freelancers, we were saying. Gig workers are the same thing. You don't want to take the job that you hate doing just because it's going to pay the bills for the month if you can find a job that you really enjoy doing that's going to help you out. So better to have that choice and freedom. Marci Grossman (35:47) True enough. David, do you have anything else you want to mention that maybe we haven't covered before we wrap up? David Maurice Sharp (35:55) I think it's important to emphasize, and I think that you do this through your work too, emphasize that it's not something that's unobtainable. It's definitely something that, that is within everybody's grasp. Don't be intimidated by the language of the financial world because it is kind of like learning another language and you'll become more familiar with it the more you're involved in it. But it really, changes the way you'll feel about and the security that you'll have in your life, whether you're an artist or a freelancer or a non-artist. It's obtainable and there's no shame and no embarrassment involved. You are where you are. It doesn't pay to look back and say, I wish I woulda, shoulda, coulda. You're not there, we're here. So if it means you're starting to save and invest at age 60 or you're starting at age 20, That's where you are. Make the most of it. Marci Grossman (36:51) Makes sense. David, thank you so much for being my guest today. We appreciate you taking the time to join us here. David Maurice Sharp (36:58) Thank you, this was great. Marci Grossman (37:00) ⁓ Marci Grossman (37:00) To my listeners, I will be sharing a link to David's information in the show notes. His website has links to his books and workshops. Please check him out. And don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money (and Life). You got this.