I think it’s easy to get caught up in the romantic side of the arts, which sort of ignores or even vilifies a lot of concepts about money and security.

I also think that’s nuts.

There’s nothing romantic about dying of tuberculosis in a flophouse.

Being properly vaccinated and having access to healthcare and crazy things like heat and food is not luxury. And it won’t make you any less of an artist. And you’re not selling out when you demand fair payment for your work.

All of this is to say that long term goals for artists are pretty much the same as for anyone:

• Move forward in your career.
• Build up an emergency fund.
• Maintain the insurance you need.
• Save up for a house down payment (if you want a house someday).
• Save for retirement.

One of the more unique long term goals for people who work in the arts is that you might also want to plan your next act career. This is especially important for people who work in very physically demanding jobs that you might not be able to do until a traditional retirement age.

Are there adjacent jobs to what you were doing that you can do when your body is just done? Is there a similar act you can train in that will still let you perform? Do you want to coach people on how to do what you do?

Is there a particular job you interact with that you think you might enjoy doing? Like a physical therapist or an agent or a general manager? Do you want to learn how to build the items you use so you can sell them to others later?

Maybe you do a job that’s not physically demanding but you work on tour all the time. You might want to make a plan for the day when you don’t want to live out of a suitcase anymore. You also might want to make a backup plan for if there are periods of your life where you just can’t tour.

I’ve spent about a year and a half total of my life off the road not because I wanted to, but because of sick family members back home. In both of those cases, I needed a plan for what I was going to do financially during those times.

I also think it’s important to have an “in between gigs” plan other than just collecting unemployment (because also you don’t really qualify for unemployment if they were 1099 gigs anyway). My fallbacks have largely been substitute teaching and working as an overhire stagehand at a few theaters around my hometown.

Maybe a small (smallest of small) silver lining in the pandemic is that for many of us it’s a time to try out a different career path. Hopefully the arts will be back before we know it and we can all go back to what we love, but this is a useful time to either get a taste of an occupation you might like to later explore or to see what life is like without a plan.

In my group of friends and former co-workers, I’ve noticed it seems very 50/50 split these days between friends who don’t have any kind of plan or idea about what they would do if they couldn’t perform and they seem wildly depressed these days. The other half would also much rather be performing but threw themselves into their backup plans – they’ve done things like opened moving companies, restaurants, and started building their own unique rola bola props to sell.

The latter half seem a lot better adjusted to what’s happening right now, both mentally and financially.

What’s your second act career plan?