Profile

I am thirty four years old and I’m a freelance stage manager and blogger – and part-time vagabond. I live at my parent’s house right now and lately I travel a lot. I’m very lucky and don’t have to pay any rent. My only monthly bill is my health insurance.

Saving & Spending

I didn’t do a whole lot of work this month. I was the Production Manager/Stage Manager for Big Apple Circus’s little side project, Circus in the Round, at a theater in Long Island. I’d been working on the Production Management aspect on and off for about a month and then spent 4 days in Long Island actually doing the show.

I spent a lot of the first half of the month traveling. I went down to Nashville to spend a few days with an old cruise ship friend. I always delusionally think Nashville is like just around the corner from New Jersey, but the 14 hour drive reminded me I was wrong again.

I talked him into going to the Grand Ole Opry with me, but that was really my only expense on the trip, since he fed and housed me otherwise. I also managed to make a pit stop on the way there to see some Cherry Blossoms in DC and on the way back to see my circus BFF.

I went to New Orleans for a long weekend with my oldest best friend – she lives in Vegas so it was a city we could meet in the middle. We had a really good time catching up together and eating delicious food and drinking horrendous drinks. We went to a psychic there who was like, I see you going to a desert – so hopefully Egypt will be in one of my updates soon – though she was hilariously wrong about everything else in my life, so…. maybe not.

Financially, I was reimbursed for my mom’s funeral this month plus a few hundred dollars when we closed her checking account. Everything else about her estate is still in limbo, but my brother and I are her beneficiaries on everything, so at some point there will also be some more cash from all that. Not exactly the cheeriest way for my net worth to increase.

Anyway, I had tapped my down payment fund for that money in December, so $9,000 of it went back into that. I still need to add $1,000 to get it back to where it was in December.

I contributed to my IRA and HSA. I started some paperwork to go work for a friend at a nearby theater as a stagehand starting next month, hopefully.

My current plan is to just pick up little gigs and work as a stagehand through the summer, prioritizing family and friend events. I keep seeing little stage management gigs I want to apply for but they all rehearse through Memorial Day weekend and I’m committed to actually going on the family camping trip for the entire weekend for the first time since I was in like junior high.

In June I have a ship friend’s wedding. In July or August, I’m probably going to London and either some additional European country or maybe a European cruise if I can get a good Friends & Family rate from old coworkers with my high school best friends. Then, if all that spending racks up enough for a free flight, which it might, I’m going to go to Australia and stay with a good friend from college for a week or so.

Then I guess it needs to go back to more of a real life. An old professor of mine is retiring in May and his job was always kind of my dream job. I have plans to meet with one of the other professors from there and talk about the possibility of taking on some of his courses.

Of course, this led me to do some stupid house searching on the off chance that I actually got the job and I found two houses that are total death traps that I am fascinated by and would like to go look at – but also I don’t want to get too excited about a future I probably won’t have, so I also don’t want to go look at them, but, just for now, check them out:

I mean, what even is that thing? It’s like a dilapidated old trailer with a strange cinder block addition. AND IT’S ONLY $30,000.

However, I am far more fascinated by this one:

Which includes some sort of swampy lake, a scary old boat, and I have visions of it refinished in a New Orleans style with gas lamp posts welcoming people to my little den in a swamp. Like… I really want to go look at this thing.

Ugh, but. Letting go of that because it probably won’t work out, I’m also thinking about what the heck I want to do next. If the college job doesn’t pan out, I think I’m going to apply for Cirque again and any other bigger tours, while I finish my accounting courses. I’m going to just keep doing the little freelance things until I hear back though.

Anyway, for the moment, April led to ciphoning off some more money in the unemployment account I set up before I left Big Apple in December. I’m still doing ok with a little over $4,000 in there, but I definitely feel that “ugh” feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I transfer money out of there.

I also barely made anything all month. I’m owed a tiny amount of money from a day as a photographer’s Production Assistant, and a decent chunk of change from Big Apple for the show we just did – and who knows when that’ll appear. I’ve seen how they treat their 1099 contractors in the past.

And, of course, there were taxes, which I put off way longer than usual. I’m pretty excited that by next year, I will have a few tax classes under my belt and hopefully it will all make more sense to me then. Because this year made me want to crawl under a rock almost as much as my year at Ringling did, as I sorted out my returns across six different states, including New York, which is like the worst state on earth to have to figure out your taxes for.

Enough rambling about what my month was like. Here are the number breakdowns:

• Food – $419.30
• Car  – $340.78
• Healthcare – $140.63
• brokeGIRLrich – $23.95
• Accordion – $139.50
• New Orleans – $454.42
• Fun – $63.23
• Gifts – $63.81
• Candles – $31.15
• Toiletries – $13.62
• Postage – $3.27
• Clothes – $134.13
• Bed Bugs – $15.94
• Exercise – $125.82
• Mom Expenses – $434.00
• Stage Management – $160.48
• Taxes – $910.00

Total Spending in April: $3,474.03

Hustling

My income this month was fairly strange. It was primarily income tax returns and brokeGIRLrich, with a portion of inheritance and a tiny bit of User Testing. And just let me tell you, it was just super weird to delete stage managing as a line item here.

• Taxes – $2118.00
• Dividends – $32.00
• brokeGIRLrich – $892.77
• User Testing – $40.00
• Inheritance – $9930.00

Income This Month: $13,012.77

 

Oh, hey, and just a reminder that if you came out a little ahead this month, That Frugal Pharmacist could still use a few bucks as they figure out life with their sick kid. You can read the whole story and donate via this link. Or if you’re doing some Amazon shopping, you can do it via their link at the bottom of their website and at no cost to you, they’ll get some kickback from Amazon.

Most Popular Post of the Month: 40+ Stores That Sell ModCloth for Less

My Favorite Post to Write This Month: The Broadway Stage Management Symposium: Worth the Splurge

Goals

• Start eating better. I still wonder if this is this quantitative? And it still doesn’t matter this month. I failed anyway. 
• Work out more. Well…. I bought a bike. And I rode it once, so… progress? I also started using Sweatcointo track my outdoor walking and possibly earn myself an iPhone in 3-5 years.
• Better stress management. I am doing well with this. I mean…. not working for a month is pretty awesome, stress—wise.
• Keep taking accounting classes. Nailing it. 
• Do two things to build up my stage management skills. I went to an APA sponsored pyrotechnics course, so one skill project done.
• Take music lessons while I’m home for a few months. Fail.
• Spend more time with family and friends. Success! 
• Be more supportive of family and friends when I can’t be there in person. Yes, maybe?
• Go out on a date. I went out on two. Totally nailed it. The goal, that is, not the guys. They were not particularly nail-able.
• Make an effort to not withhold kind words and encouragement. Check.
• Max out my Roth IRA. On track. 
• Max out my HSA. On track. 
• Set aside $5,000 for my house downpayment account. No progress here. 
• Set aside $2,000 for my new car account. No progress here. 
• Invest $2,000. No progress here. 
• Read more. Fail.
• Learn to make macaroons. No further progress. 
• Visit two roadside attractions. Wild Bill’s Prop Shop in Connecticut, the Mars Cheese Castle, the National Bobblehead Museum, the Lake Geneva Ice Castle.